Can't clean, won't clean?

Does the idea of spring cleaning bring you out in a cold sweat? Is your home seemingly beyond the help of a brush and pan? It could be time to call in the professionals. Hester Lacey meets the people you ring when the vacuum can't cope

If you had spent the winter cooped up in a muddy hovel with reeds on the floor and chickens sharing the family living space, this would be the time of year when you'd throw out the winter rushes from underfoot. Likewise, if your cold, dark days had been lit by candles and heated by open fires, it would be time to attack the resulting grime. Few of us these days have to deal with the fallout of a season's worth of chickens or soot. But we are still psychologically committed to the idea of the spring clean.

Sandra Redmond runs the south-west London franchise of the cleaning company Molly Maid, and this is a busy time of year for her. "When it gets to March and the sun starts shining, you can see all the dust, smears and dirt. That's when we start to get a lot of requests for spring cleans."

Getting some outside help is one way to get the job done. But if you plan to tackle a spring clean yourself, there are various professional tips that will make it easier. The first key, says Redmond, is to work systematically. Always start at the top, whether it's the top of the house or the top shelf in a room. Always dust first and vacuum after. And, she says, work from left to right round the room, rather than haphazardly. "You need to take all items off the surfaces you're working on," she adds. "It's impossible to clean round items on shelves."

Bob Rehill is managing director of Mrs Duster, another domestic cleaning company. He recommends breaking tasks down into manageable chunks. "If you're cleaning a big window, for example, don't try and do the whole thing in one hit. Spray your product onto the cloth, not the glass, and work on a small area at a time." Most products are much of a muchness, he says, but cloths and technique are more important. "You need old-fashioned dusters with a high cotton content; and you need two for each task, the first to apply the cleaning product and take off the worst of the dirt, the second for buffing and polishing." Do not think that simply turning one cloth inside out will do, he warns – you'll simply be reapplying the product and redistributing the dirt.

Trisha Schofield, head of testing at the Good Housekeeping Institute, suggests tackling one room at a time – that way you won't get demoralised by the magnitude of the job. She also recommends carrying a basket of cleaning kit from room to room, to save you having to run up and down stairs searching for the right polish or cloth.

Do you actually use the attachments on your vacuum cleaner? If not, why not? "Use them for dusting, rather than doing it manually," says Schofield. "Line the base of cupboards with wallpaper, so you don't have to clean them; simply screw up the paper and throw it away. And if you're washing curtains, do the linings separately, as they can shrink at different rates."

What about the old wives' cleaning tales? The Good Housekeeping Institute has tested many, and some work brilliantly. Vinegar, for instance, will descale kettles, clear blocked shower heads and attack limescale in general. It's also excellent for cleaning windows. Distilled vinegar is less smelly than straight malt. Milk will remove ink stains if you get to them quickly enough, ironing through brown paper removes candle wax from fabric (don't let the hot iron touch the wax), and lemon juice, followed by drying in the sun, gets rid of rust marks.

On no account, warns Schofield, should you try to use vodka or gin to remove stains on leather. They might remove the stains but will also ruin the surface itself. And neither salt nor white wine will cure red wine stains; in fact, it can set them immoveably. For both problems, she recommends a stain remover such as Ink Away (Leather Master, £3.95, 0115 9460274) or Wine Away (Lakeland Limited, £8.95, 01539 488100).

If this all sounds far too strenuous, however, you can hire someone else to do your dirty work. The average cost of a "deep clean", from Mrs Duster is around £75. Depending on the state of your home, Sandra Redmond reckons on around £190 plus VAT for a Molly Maid spring clean of an average three-bedroomed house. Everyone thinks they can clean, she says, but sadly some people can't – she has seen houses where people have used oven cleaner on their banisters, with sorry results, and others where drooping Christmas decorations are still in situ at midsummer.

Another way to avoid the more daunting aspects of the full Monty spring clean is to do little and often, year-round. What's needed, says Bob Rehill, is a proper schedule. "Draw up a list of the rooms in your home. Then break that down into tasks; in the kitchen you might have sink, hob, cooker, fridge. For all these, you would do a surface clean once a week, with one-off special attention when it's needed. This way, you have a maintenance programme, not a disaster-recovery situation."

Sandra Redmond's tips include keeping a cloth under the bathroom sink for daily wiping, dealing with any spills immediately, wiping the cooker hob each time it's used, and either drying down the shower or using an anti-limescale spray every day. "Cleaning up as you go along is simply a question of training," she says. "The house looks so much cleaner and smarter if you do little bits as you go along." Again, you can get someone else to do all this: Molly Maid's charges for a fortnightly clean of a three-bedroomed house are around £45 plus VAT. A regular weekly visit from Mrs Duster is £33.

Bob Rehill at Mrs Duster also sells gift vouchers, to whatever value the giver requires. Some people might argue that these don't have the romance factor, of, say, flowers or chocolates. Others might hurl their own duster aside with a joyous sigh of relief.

Mrs Duster: 0870 8500811, or visit www.mrsduster.co.uk – 'Independent' readers can claim a 5 per cent discount on a spring clean or on the first eight weeks of a maintenance cleaning programme.

Molly Maid, 0800 500950 or visit www.mollymaid.co.uk